Crasftstravaganzaa 2009 (Spring Edition)

This past weekend was the annual Craftstravaganzaa Craft Fair in our lovely city. It took place downtown, where I shared a booth with my friend, fellow crafter, and bookstore coworker Christy Wooke. It was a two day event this year and although we got lashed by the rain pretty good on the first day, it ended up being a pretty successful and fun weekend.

I've been making some new wall art using embroidery hoops and they were a big hit! I really enjoy making them and got a few done while I was manning our booth at the craft fair. My pillows were also a favorite. All of this makes me very happy. I tend to doubt myself when it comes to new things it art and crafts.


Christy also did well with her adorable hand-drawn magnets and pins. Unfortunately her magnets were a little worse for wear after the hurricane conditions of the first day. On the second day we came equipped with shower curtains to put up around our tent but of course it didn't rain at all THAT day.

Our booth was right next to our friends Missy and Raoul so we got to chat with them all weekend. I managed to limit my purchases to one adorable stuffed elephant which I'm sure will feature heavily in some upcoming blogs. I'll keep him under wraps for now and just leave a hint: traveling circus. Now go and figure it out.

PS Happy 30th Anniversary Mom and Dad!

Winter Clearance Sale!

Hello all!

Just wanted to drop a note to tell you that I'm having my annual winter sale over in my Etsy shop. This is the time of year when people are shucking off the vestiges of winter and donning flip flops and shorts. We're especially feeling the hit right now in Athens, where it has gone from a mild 65 degrees to a sweltering 90 in a matter of a few days.

Soooooo, I decided it would be the perfect time to start my clearance sale. I'm offering a 30% discount on most of my winter knitted items, and some of them were already VERY inexpensive. For example, this hat is now only $16.80 . . .

I mostly have scarves, and there are some very nice selections if I don't say so myself. This "Cosby Sweater Scarf is going for the low low price of $21! CRAZINESS! Ok, not craziness, but still a pretty good deal. So, if you're in the nirghborhood please stop by the shop to see if there's something you like, in or out of the sale section.

On another note, if anyone is going to be in Athens next weekend (May 2-3) I'm participating for the second year in Athens Indie Craftstravanganzaa, where I'll be selling my wares alongside my friend Chrsity, whose awesomely cute items you can also find on her Etsy shop, Wooke. The craft fair will be on Saturday from 11am to 7pm and on Sunday from 12pm to 5pm. It will be in the parking lot next to Agora and the Caledonia Lounge, behing the 40 Watt Club. Please stop by and buy something from somebody, even if it's not me!

Things I love!

I have too much trouble trying to think of things to write about that will be interesting so this post will just be about objects and things that I like.


This seller is really awesome! Not only has she been kind enough to feature my own shop in some of her superb treasuries, but her jewelry is just gorgeous and very affordable! She also has Surprise items that you can buy if you're more adventurous. I'll definitely be partaking in that. It reminds me of buying those brown paper bags at the toy store for a dollar and hoping you'd get something good, but not really caring because half the fun was in the mystery. You can find her stuff at her shop on Etsy, called 3dots.



Okay, I'm not usually a big fan of the pink, though I admit that it definitely has its merits, including looking like some delicious cupcake frosting in this big, cute bag from Morelle.


Um, can you say cute? If not, this brooch pretty much spells it out for you. Check out these Craftyfolk on Etsy.



Let's face it, pillows are nice to lay on so why not get one that's also nice to look at. If you're in the market check out Olive's shop.

I just wanted a short refreshing post so I hope you liked what you saw. If so, please take a look at these creative people and buy something from them.

A Parade of Creatures

Recently I've been exploring a new craft; embroidery. I've always kind of thought of this as an old lady craft until I picked up a book called "Doodle-Stitching" which made it look very fun and cute. Sooooo . . . . I went out and bought my first embroidery hoop ( a cheap wooden one) and then soon went out and bought my second embroidery hoop(a much better, plastic one) and began stitching away. So far I only know how to do one real stitch but it seems to be working for my current purposes.

I've been working my way back and forth through my encyclopedia of animals trying to capture the ones that are both embroidery friendly and cute. My first attempts were an owl, a fox, and a narwhal. Yes, I said it, a narwhal. I'm going to reveal my stupidity here, but until about a year ago I thought narwhals were mythological creatures akin to a unicorn or a hobbit, but they're real. This fact blew my mind. It would seriously be like if someone told you that of course unicorns are real, haven't you ever watched the Discovery Channel?! I just had to try my hand at creating one of these guys and embroidering him on a pillow seemed the most practical way.

We're also preparing for an upcoming tour of our band, Captain #1. We'll be traveling up the East Coast and then toward Michigan where my sister lives. Tim's an old hand at this tramping around the country thing, while I'm relatively new to it. I am looking forward to seeing new places.

Well, that's all for now. I'm going back to eating popcorn and watching bad TV.

The Long Wait Part 2

So, you don't have to tell me that it's been a ridiculously long time since I updated my blog, though some of you already have. The good news is that when I wait this long I usually have more to say and more pictures to show you. I'll start with the more recent . . .

This past Sunday we awoke (in the early afternoon) to find gobs of snow on the ground and still more spilling from the sky. A week earlier we were in Detroit for my lovely sister's birthday and saw snow there, but any snow at all is a rare sight in Georgia and this was a positive blanket. Being from the Midwest (El Kansas, to be precise) I've seen my share of snow, but Tim (the bf) and basically everyone I know down here is from the South. Tim didn't get to see snow until he was 17! He just kept walking around saying, "This is blowing my mind!" To the left you'll see the slightly retarded but endearingly lovable snowman we made.

All in all, I'd say we got about a foot of snow. In the north this wouldn't be such a great big deal and people would pretty much go about their normal lives. But this is the South, meaning two things: 1) No snow plows or salt trucks, and 2) No one realizes the importance of cutting down dead trees. We were most effected by the latter, as our street became strewn with fallen limbs, and one especially monstrous tree that fell across the entire road and took out the electricity on our block. We survived by candlelight for about 36 hours until about midnight on the second day, when I had just finished a candlelit shower (luckily our hot water heater is gas) and flipped the wall switch out of habit, only to find that our electricity had miraculously been restored. I definitely don't think I could have survived before the late 1800s without complaining a lot.

Though the snow was a bit inconvenient, I think overall it was a nice change from the routine.

In other news, I have been a total bum about my Etsy shop which I guess isn't really news so much as lack of news. I have all these new ideas for really cute pillows with some embroidery, but I can't get myself motivated. So, I've decided that today is the day. I finally posted my first new item in a while. It's a cute lacy little scarf. I love this goldish mustard color a lot. I think because it looks kind of vintage. Also, it makes me want to wear shirts with poofy sleeves. Don't ask me why. This me trying to look all fashion-y and stuff. That's not what I really look like though.

Tomorrow we'll be heading down to Florida for the Harvest of Hope Music Festival. We'll only be spectating, not participating so hopefully it will be a stress-free weekend with some good music. We'll also be camping which is always both fun and irritating. Like I said, I like modern conveniences. I like to think I can be a little rough and tumble when I need to be though.

Thanks to anyone who has been willing to wait for months to read a new blog post. I hope you weren't holding your breath.


This is our cat Rilke, looking positively pissed that we've decided to let here experience snow.

The Long Wait Part One

It's been a while since I blogged last. That's partly because I'm still getting used to blogging, and partly because we've just been super busy. In a mostly good way.

Some awesomeness came our way when we (a group of us from work(Barnes and Noble)) went to see John Hodgeman in Atlanta. He was talking about his new book, "More Information than You Require", which is a follow-up to his first tome, "The Areas of My Expertise". For those of you who don't know John Hodgeman you may recognize him from such pop culture icons as "The Daily Show", or more begrudgingly, those Apple Mac commercials where he plays "PC".
His books are great and are full of totally useless and desperately needed information, such as which presidents had hooks for hands, and what that 51st state is all about. I encourage you to read them.

We also took a trip down to Florida this weekend to play a few shows( did you know that my boyfriend and I are in a band called Captain #1?) and visit Tim's parents since he won't be seeing them for Thanksgiving.
We stopped on the way and got this great picture of me hugging a stuffed tiger in a Walgreens. We were trying to replicate the amazing image we found of Alan Thicke hugging a stuffed tiger. I guess it was a head shot or something, but it's just ridiculous and great.

Well, I'll have much more to look at in the next week, but there's so much to be done, with packing and crafting, and flying on jet planes, and eating turkey!

Happy Thanksgiving, Alan Thicke!

Hello Fall, Goodbye Fall

Here in Georgia it always seems that as soon as you welcome fall with pumpkins and apples and Halloween, you're waving goodbye to it and saying hello to winter. This year fall has been a bit up and down. A few weeks ago it got REALLY cold for Georgia. Down in the forties and such. But today it was almost eighty degrees, and that's just not right. So, here's a little homage to fall, in case you miss it.

Tim was smart enough to nab some photos of our spooky (and silly) jack-o-lanterns before they completely rotted. I made the spooky one on the right. Tim thought it was too scary , but it's right up my alley. I love scary movies (not gory ones) and with this pumpkin I was going for a sort of bucked-tooth vampire look. Tim leaned toward goofy, but we decided that his pumpkin looked most like Dick Cheney, and that's scarier than anything I've ever made.

Today I took some pictures of the changing leaves in our yard. The colors that nature can produce are truly amazing. There's one tree, which I haven't got a picture of, that is so large and bursting with bright yellow leaves, they look like canary feathers. A tree of canaries! What an image. Our yard is pretty too, especially this pretty red and orange number in the back.

One last fallish thing . . . I got this picture of the sky clouding over into evening. I'm not sure why it's so dark in one corner. I'm pretty sure I didn't put my thumb in it. Maybe the camera picked up something I didn't.

Well, I'll give one last sigh for fall and hope it will last a few more days, but I don't have my hopes up. No doubt in a week, it will be bitterly cold and I'll have to wear three pairs of socks to bed. You'd think if it were going to be cold we could at least get some snow, but that's a rarity as well.